1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to board games in general and more particularly to a game where words, letters or portions thereof are formed with removable markers on ordered matrix patterns incorporated onto the surface of the board.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Board games forming letters and words are well known in the past art. The majority of the games maneuver individually lettered tiles into words such as in the well known board game of "Scrabble". The tiles drawn or alloted to each player are generally not of the players choice and he must create words or phrases using randomly distributed letters. The player is often left at some point in the game with letters that are difficult or impossible to create words from. Many other games use the same random letter distribution method with various alterations of the rules and regulations of the game. Games of this type leave the player without the option to create words completely of his or her own choice. A search was conducted at the United States Patent Office to examine word oriented board games in general and specifically games in which the player generates the letters of self-chosen words by combination of segments. Of those past art patents examined, the following were considered most pertinent to my invention:
On Jan. 6, 1981, Maxim D. Levinrad was granted U.S. Pat. No. 4,243,225, for a game where portions of letters are combined to form complete letters, and the complete letters later used to form words. Each player is alloted a certain number of tiles not of his choice and is limited to creating letters within the range of the alloted tile group.
H. H. Kerr III et al, was issued U.S. Pat. No. 3,426,452, on Feb. 11, 1969, for an educational toy adapted for use in playing word games. Frameworks are used to build individual letters from separate geometric segments. Many of the frameworks are specific for certain letters or groups of letters and are therefore not versatile for all letters of the alphabet. The game board also does not contain an ordered matrix pattern used for forming the letters.
The foregoing were considered typical of developing past art relative to the field of the immediate invention. Neither of these past art patents were structured similar to my device nor were the playing objectives the same. I therefore feel that the individual letter structuring used in my word game provides new and novel features to the field of word games which are not included in the past art.